George Biddell Airy to Faraday   8 November 1854

Royal Observatory Greenwich | 1854 November 8

My dear Sir

Most happy shall I be to give such a lecture as you propose¹ - if, after weighing the following considerations you will still accept it.

1. Local circumstances, which you can easily imagine, compelled me to give a lecture at South Shields² (the town to which the mine is near). So that a lecture at the Institution may now seem to the attendants thereof to be simply a second-hand or rechauffeé, and accordingly may not be acceptable.

2. I am getting on with the calculations as fast as I can: till they are done I do not even know whether the experiments are worth any thing: but before the time of lecturing I hope to know all about it. Suppose they should then prove good for nothing, what should you say to it?³

I am, my dear Sir, | Yours very truly | G.B. Airy

Professor Faraday